Nobody is arguing that children should take up nicotine products, and introducing age restrictions for pouches and gums, among others, is sensible. The current minimum age for buying vapes in Iceland is 18. The proposed bill intends to introduce the same limit for other nicotine products. ID requirements and potential fines for retailers increase compliance rates, as the examples of Germany and Canada show.

Aspects of the law seek to protect children at the expense of adult smokers and vapers—a theme we’ve seen repeated elsewhere.

However, the other aspects of the proposed law seek to protect children at the expense of adult smokers and vapers—a theme we’ve seen repeated elsewhere in the world. The underlying assumption that nicotine is everyone’s enemy is concerning. A better appreciation of the facts about nicotine and flavors would add impetus to Icelandic efforts to reduce smoking that are already succeeding.

Iceland today has a reported adult smoking rate of just 7 percent—the lowest in Europe apart from Sweden, where smokeless snus has been widely adopted as a replacement for cigarettes. As recently as 2014, Iceland’s reported adult smoking rate was 14 percent; the rise of vaping among tens of thousands of Icelanders has been credited, in part, with smoking’s rapid decline.

Vaping is vastly safer than smoking. Yet nicotine consumption is traditionally associated with smoking, and that association continues to distort perceptions.

The truth is that nicotine is relatively harmless—unlike toxins found in tobacco smoke. According to Yorkshire Cancer Research in England, “Nicotine is not the cause of death from smoking. Nicotine is not a carcinogen; there is no evidence that sustained use of nicotine alone increases cancer risk. Of the three main causes of death from smoking (lung cancer, Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease and cardiovascular disease), none are caused by nicotine. The harm from smoking comes from the thousands of other chemicals in tobacco smoke.”

Nicotine is also used in nicotine-replacement therapy, which speaks for its harmless qualities. Multiple studies have found that it also enhances cognitive function and reduces the risk of Parkinson’s disease.

Giving up on smoking is difficult. And if nicotine is safe, then the goal of tobacco control should be to endorse safer ways of consuming nicotine. Thanks to innovation, there are several ways to do that. Some smokers prefer nicotine pouches and gums, or, as seen in Sweden, forms of smokeless tobacco. For many others—the bulk of 82 million people worldwide at one recent count—e-cigarettes are the best way to quit smoking and the health risks that come with it.

Flavor bans drive vapers back to smoking or into the riskier illicit market. Does Iceland want to prove the point?

Given all this, how can it be justified to limit the amount of nicotine that vapers may consume? When vapers are overwhelmingly either ex-smokers or smokers in the process of switching, allowing whatever nicotine concentrations best help them to stay off cigarettes is a clear public health imperative.

Vape flavors, which Iceland also proposes to ban, are moreover an essential element in helping many smokers quit. They’re routinely mischaracterized as appealing uniquely to children, but adults prefer them too.

Flavor bans drive vapers—teenagers, too—back to smoking or into the riskier illicit market. A 2020 survey of vapers in Canada, England and the United States found that in response to flavor bans, “28.3% would find a way to get their banned flavor(s), 17.1% would stop vaping and smoke instead.” Does Iceland want to prove the point?

While the architects of the new law may have good intentions, they need a better grasp of these realities. Sensible regulation, including child and consumer protections, can be achieved without removing key options that smokers need to switch. As it stands, the legislation risks counteracting years of Icelandic progress.

Photograph of Reykjavik, Iceland by Berit via Wikimedia Commons/Creative Commons 2.0

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On June 1, the Ukrainian Parliament passed in the first reading the draft law #4358: “On Amendments to Some Laws of Ukraine on Public Health Protection from Harmful Tobacco Exposure.” Some key provisions include a prohibition of the use of e-cigarettes in public places, along with advertising, sponsorship and promotion of nicotine vapes. Vape flavors will also be banned if the parliament fully endorses the bill.

According to the explanatory note for #4358—which mirrors the World Health Organization’s recommendations—the law aims to reduce smoking rates among adults by restricting access, marketing and advertising of conventional tobacco, as well as dong the same to new nicotine products and preventing underage vaping.

Banning vape flavors and the promotion of safer alternatives will only increase smoking-related harms that already hit the country hard.

Ukraine has around 9.5 million smokers, according to the Global State of Tobacco Harm Reduction (GSTHR)—representing a smoking rate among adults of over 25 percent. Our country suffers over 96,000 annual smoking-related deaths. However, the proposed vaping measures do not stand up to scrutiny and will do more harm than good.

A lower-middle income country like Ukraine is particularly vulnerable to the WHO’s misleading statements about vaping. The latest WHO report claims that many countries are “not addressing emerging nicotine and tobacco products and failing to regulate them” and stresses that only a few are effective at that. For a country that’s trying to please the UN for geopolitical reasons, it is a compelling demand to tighten regulation.

E-cigarettes are completely different from conventional cigarettes, and equating them is a fundamental mistake. When burned, traditional cigarettes create more than 7,000 chemicals, at least 69 of which have been identified as carcinogens. Vape liquids, besides water and nicotine, consist of propylene glycol and vegetable glycerin, both used to form the vapor and add flavor to it. Added to these two ingredients is a flavor, usually a common food flavoring, to help give the vape liquid its taste.

Vape flavors—targeted by #4358—play a crucial role in helping smokers quit. Vapers who use flavors are 2.3 times more likely to quit than those who use tobacco-flavored e-cigarettes. The accessibility of vape flavors ensures that smokers—especially heavy smokers—can experiment to find out which one works best for them.

Banning vape flavors won’t drive down teen smoking. In fact, it might double the probability of them taking up traditional cigarettes, according to a study by ​​the Yale School of Public Health.

Overall, according to the UK’s Royal College of Physicians, “the hazard to health arising from long-term vapor inhalation from the e-cigarettes available today is unlikely to exceed 5 percent of the harm from smoking tobacco,” with developing technology likely to further improve safety, and “it is important to promote [their] use … as widely as possible as a substitute for smoking.”

But promoting this lifesaving alternative is exactly what Ukraine’s new law would forbid. It would block access to key information about the benefits of switching, and the 2 million smokers in Ukraine who could switch, given UK-style vape-friendly policies, might never do so. The restrictions on a burgeoning new industry, together with smoking-related health care costs, would additionally hamper Ukraine’s post-COVID economic recovery.

The Ukrainian government should take the path of science and move away from the poisonous, WHO-induced belief that vaping is the same as smoking. Banning vape flavors and the promotion of safer alternatives will only increase smoking-related harms that already hit the country hard. Only by encouraging vaping, as countries like the UK have done successfully, can Ukraine show its commitment to improving public health for the generations to come.

Photograph of Sofia Square, Kiev by Сергій Венцеславський via Wikimedia Commons/Creative Commons 4.0

Knowledge-Action-Change, which publishes GSTHR, has provided restricted grants and donations to The Influence Foundation, which operates Filter.

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